Samsung update has hard bricked my S7 edge

[RBee]

Hi,

Wondering if anyone has experienced the following problem and if you found a solution apart from buying a new phone because Samsung customer service has been the worst I've ever encountered so far.

So, a couple of weekends back, Samsung pushed an update to my phone. I enabled it to update just before going to sleep on the Saturday night, when I woke up on Sunday morning it was still stuck on the splash screen. I had to to a hard reboot to make it come back on. Please note the phone had sufficient battery and was also charging when I set the update off.

For about four days after I did this update my phone froze at least once a day when doing pretty standard things like scrolling through Facebook etc. and required a hard reboot each time to bring it back to life. The last time it happened, I was looking for a picture in my gallery and had to turn it off and now it is bricked, hard. It won't recognise when it's charging, it won't turn on with any of the button combinations Samsung talked me through, computers won't recognise it.

Samsung arranged to pick it up and now their 3rd party repair centre that basically seems to tell everyone that their phone is out of warranty won't do anything at all to help me. I paid £629 for a phone that I may as well throw in the bin for all the use it is. They won't acknowledge that they have an onus for their products to be fit for purpose. Why is it okay for them to leave their customers out of pocket, and not a little either, and try and charge me for £206 to fix the screen before they'll even look at what the actual problem is (yeah they've worsened the condition of my phone since they got it too it looks like someone has crushed it from the pics they sent - it didn't look like that when I sent it). 

Has anyone had experience with an update doing this?

[BandOfBrothers]

If this was my device @RBee I'd look to be taking it personally to a Samsung Experience Store or Samsung Service Location for assistance. 

Who supplied the phone to you originally ? I.e. Samsung or Network Shop ?

If a phone has a smashed screen unfortunately this will look like the act of causing this could look to be an accidental drop and as they would have to probably open up the phone then the current damage would hinder this. 

Perhaps take a look at > http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act

[RBee]

Thanks for replying @BandofBrothers. I originally bought it from Carphone Warehouse, not on a contract or anything I just bought the handset outright and not locked to a network, but as that was just over 12 months ago I'm sure they would now tell me to go to the manufacturer as it's still under manufacturer's warranty.

My nearest Samsung store is an hour away which is why I opted for the courier service, not realising until it was too late that they just send all products to a third party centre.

As it's the software that is corrupted I don't understand why they can't try to reflash it before resorting to opening it up, from what I've seen from others online and my own experience it certainly feels like this third party centre just has carte blanche to deem everything out of warranty unless you agree to hand over £XXX and even then there's no guarantee they will fix the actual issue after that. If they ensured they could fix the actual problem but you had to have the screen fixed to get the phone back then that would be a little more palatable, but currently the order is you pay us to fix this issue that has been working fine for months, and then we will try and fix the actual problem but please note costs could escalate after the initial 200 quid you hand over.

I work for an electronics repair company, and we quote customers up front for the repair after an assesment. We can't say it's going to be X amount and then go inside the unit and be like wellll, actually this is another few hundred quid now. It's just bad practice from them, I don't know how they can expect people to hand over £100s when they haven't even assessed the issue or guaranteed they can repair it.

[BandOfBrothers]

You're very Welcome @RBee

One of the first avenues they would take is a Factory Reset which takes it back to the last firmware update but I also suspect they'll see that the damage could have caused issues. 

It's a common query by people who've sent off the phone for an issue to be repaired only to be told due to a damaged screen they cannot proceed until authorisation has been given to have that user caused damage resolved or they'd typically send the unit back untouched. 

The seller of the phone i.e Cpw are initially Duty bound to help you under the Manufacturing Warranty as they supplied it. 

"Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act are against the retailer – the company that sold you the product – not the manufacturer, so you must take any claim to the retailer. "

The Manufacturer are also usually keen to help. 

2015 consumer-rights-act.